


A Rose by Any Other Name

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Adultery of the Mind if not the Body, Arranged Marriage, F/M, Politics, Wedding Night, Wrong Name
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-18 00:44:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13670724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: On his wedding night, Cleon whispers the wrong name.





	A Rose by Any Other Name

A Rose by Any Other Name

Ermelian’s hair was as golden as the Kennan grain swept away in the floods and the coins in her dowry that would prevent Cleon’s people from starving in the upcoming winter, while her eyes were as blue as the water that had drowned the precious crops that meant life to his fief. She wasn’t the woman Cleon had dreamed of marrying, but when he had taken her as his wife before gods and mortals, the crowd packed into the temple had rattled the arches with their cheers. 

The people of Kennan loved Ermelian with a passion Cleon feared he would never be able to match. With a sunbeam smile as bright as her hair, she would dispense alms to even the most wretched urchin with a gracious smile that suggested nothing could please her more than to slip a loaf of bread into grubby, outstretched palms. 

The people of Kennan didn’t know Ermelian any better than Cleon did, but they understood that she brought a dowry that would keep porridge on their tables this winter and buy seeds for planting come spring. That as well as the feasts and hogsheads of ale her family had ordered in honor of the marriage throughout the villages of Kennan where there had been nothing to celebrate since the floods washed away hope with the grain had been enough to steal their hearts. They clapped for her and praised her name as if she were a goddess who could save them from starvation and sorrow. 

Alone with her in the bedroom that echoed with emptiness which they were expected to share forever after the priestesses blessed their sheets for fertility and then wafted out in a stream of incense, Cleon decided that if he couldn’t love her with the fervor of his people, he could at least try. Trying wouldn’t cost him a copper. 

“You’re the sun that shines on my life, warming my stone heart.” Cleon’s heart felt cold as ice as he burned for another woman, and his hand trembled as he cupped her cheek, swallowing its smallness because she was too tiny to fit with him. He complimented her since he wanted to be kind as she was and didn’t wish her to imagine that she had married a man as hard as the mountains along the Scanran border he had defended. 

“You’ve been too long in the sun if your brains are baked enough to talk such silliness.” Ermelian poured a goblet of Tyran wine—paid for by her parents, of course—and extended the stem to him. “You must be thirsty.” 

“I am.” Cleon suddenly discovered that his mouth was dry as a drought. He sipped at his wine as swiftly as propriety would allow, the fine vintage tasteless on his tongue, and clung to the crystal goblet because he couldn’t hold onto anything else: not his dreams, not his desires, not his land, and not Kel. “Thank you.” 

“It’s sweet yet strong.” Ermelian sniffed delicately at her wine, and Cleon remembered with a surge of spite that a husband was never supposed to feel for his wife that she was a mere three generations removed from wine merchants. Her recently ennobled family was willing to pay her weight in gold to wed into a family from the Book of Gold whose name was the only currency it had left. Marrying into even an impoverished Book of Gold family was an expensive prospect. “Like a good wife. Like a worthy woman.” 

He didn’t know what to say in response, so he kissed her. He had to bend in on himself like a cursed hunchback to brush his lips across hers and wondered how soon his body would break from kissing a lady a foot shorter than him. 

He guided her onto the bed, where the differences in their height would be less stark. As he entered her, he envisioned her with hazel eyes and mouse brown hair. She cried in agony, ecstasy, or both as he moved inside her, pretending her warmth was Kel’s. When he climaxed, it was Kel’s name he whispered into the shell of her ear as he spent himself in her soft slit. 

Afterward she curled away from him, clutching a blanket to her breasts. “You called me something you never had before.” 

“Diamond of my desire?” He blinked, hoping that she hadn’t heard him whisper the name of another woman as he tried to make love to her. 

“Is that what you called her?” Ermelian’s eyes were diamonds but of contempt, not desire. 

“I didn’t mean to hurt you.” Cleon’s gaze dropped to the blood on the mattress that was all the proof he would ever need that he had shattered something irrevocable and sacred inside her. 

“I don’t care what you meant.” Ermelian’s words were as condemning as the scarlet stain seeping across the sheets. He had made a bloody mess of his marriage. “You were supposed to be the half that made me whole and instead you broke me.”


End file.
